Merry Christmas! I am in tune with the philosophy of that fabled co-founder of "Sesame Street," Joan Ganz Cooney. She says, "This is the most incredible time to be alive. Everything that is happening makes me more eager to live long enough to see how things turn out."

Ran into Marlo Thomas and her equally famous husband, Phil Donahue, and we began talking about the Christmas plea on TV that Marlo makes every year for the St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. I don't know how she does it, but Marlo and her associates whomp up more than $600 million every year to keep St. Jude's able to treat ailing children with the newest research, whether their families can pay or not.

Congratulating Marlo is useless. She just laughs: "My brother and I used to say to our wonderful dad, Danny Thomas, who founded St. Jude's: 'Daddy, why couldn't you leave us a booming gambling casino instead of a children's hospital to raise money for?!'"

You might think about sending a Christmas-New Year's gift to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., 501 St. Jude Place, 38105. Think of the many children there fighting cancer.

At this time of year I usually reprint the words written in 1926 by the pastor of Riverside Baptist Church, but I will just end with that man's appreciation of Jesus Christ. After noting the insignificant background of that one solitary life, the pastor closed with these words:

"Twenty centuries have come and gone and today, he is the central figure for much of the human race. All the armies that ever marched and all the navies that ever sailed and all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as this One Solitary Life."

I wish my wonderful readers Merry Christmas!

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